"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Friday, December 14, 2012

ESPN’s Rob Parker has ignited a serious discussion of the changing views of race when he called Washington redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III a “cornball brother.”

Parker, who is the host of ESPN’s “First Take,” called RGIII out
because he feels the football star is “distancing himself from his black
people.” Rob Parker’s rant came after Robert Griffin III said being
African-American doesn’t define him as a person. What added fuel to
Parker’s fire is Griffin having a white fiancée and being a Republican.

Golly, that's the race traitor trifecta! I'll bet ESPN will never again refer to Mr. Griffin as an "athletic quarterback". He's so obviously white he must hereafter be called "cerebral" and a "gym rat" with a "high motor".

Rob Parker got all bent out of shape because of Griffin’s comments in a USA Today article. In the article, RGIII is quoted:

“I am an African-American in America. That will never
change. But I don’t have to be defined by that…We always try to find
similarities in life, no matter what it is so they’re going to try to
put you in a box with other African-American quarterbacks – Vick,
Newton, Randall Cunningham, Warren Moon…That’s the goal. Just to go out
and not try to prove anybody wrong but just let your talents speak for
themselves.”

I may be getting old, kiddies, but that sounds like MLK Jr. to me.

The “First Take” host responded to the USA Today article with a pointed question:

“It makes me wonder deeper about him. I’ve talked to some
people in Washington D.C. My question, which is just a straight, honest
question, is he a brother or is he a cornball brother”

Authorities say at least 26 people,
including 18 children, were killed Friday when a gunman clad in black
military gear opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school.

A law enforcement official said the
shooter, who is dead, was from New Jersey and had ties to Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown. Authorities recovered a Glock and Sig
Sauer 9mm handgun, but it was unclear who killed the shooter, who wore
black combat garb and a military vest.

Local news outlets report that the
shooting occurred inside a kindergarten classroom, and that all the
pupils in that classroom are unaccounted for. An official with knowledge of the
situation said the 20-year-old gunman, whose name has not been released,
also had a .223-caliber rifle. The motive is not yet known.

Police are also questioning another
man in connection with the shooting. Witnesses told the Connecticut Post
that a handcuffed man, dressed in camouflage, was led out of a nearby
woods by officers.

Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul
Vance said during an afternoon news conference that police arrived at
the scene "within minutes" of a 911 call placed shortly after 9:30 a.m.

“Every door, every crack, every crevice of that school” was checked, Vance said. “The entire school was searched.”

Vance did not give details about the
number of victims other than to say they included students and staff,
pending notification of the families. He said more information would be
released, possibly later Friday.

The massacre began inside the school's
main office as the principal was making morning announcements. Sources
told Fox News students throughout the school could hear gunshots over
the intercom system before the gunman entered the kindergarten classroom
and continued his bloody rampage.

A dispatcher at the Newtown Volunteer
Ambulance Corps said a teacher was shot in the foot and taken to Danbury
Hospital. Local news outlets also reported that the principal was among
those shot.

Parent Lisa Procaccini told Fox News that her daughter was sitting in a classroom when she and others heard gun shots.

"She was in a small class -- a reading
group and they started hearing bangs," Procaccini said. "Her teacher,
and I’m grateful for this, rushed kids into the bathroom and locked the
door. They told kids it was hammering and tried to keep them calm.”

"Children were crying," Procaccini
said. "She did tell me about a little boy that was in a police officer’s
arms, bleeding. I don’t know if she gets it."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said two firearms were recovered from the scene.

President Obama was notified of the shooting around 10:30 am ET, White House officials said.

The Newtown School District has locked down schools as a preventive measure to ensure the safety of students and staff.

A statement on the district's website stated that afternoon kindergarten classes have been canceled.

The elementary school has close to 700 students.

Newtown is in Fairfield County, about 45 miles southwest of Hartford and 60 miles northeast of New York City.

A law enforcement official says the attacker in the Connecticut school shootings is a 20-year-old man with ties to the school.

The official said that a gun used
in the attacks is a .223-caliber rifle. The official also said that New
Jersey state police are searching a location in that state in
connection with the shootings, said by an official in Connecticut to
have left 27 dead, including 18 children.

The official in Washington spoke
on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to
speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.

You don't have to be a jazz aficionado to recognize
"Take Five," the smoky instrumental by the Dave Brubeck Quartet that
instantly evokes swinging bachelor pads, hi-fi systems and cool
nightclubs of the 1950s and '60s.

"Take Five" was a musical milestone — a deceptively complex jazz
composition that managed to crack the Billboard singles chart and
introduce a new, adventurous sound to millions of listeners.

In a career that spanned almost all of American jazz since World War
II, Brubeck's celebrated quartet combined exotic, challenging tempos
with classical influences to create lasting standards.

The pianist and composer behind the group, Brubeck died Wednesday of
heart failure at a hospital in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was a day shy of
his 92nd birthday.

Brubeck believed that jazz presented the best face of America to the world.

"Jazz is about freedom within discipline," he said in a 2005
interview with The Associated Press. "Usually a dictatorship like in
Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just
seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.

"Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play
jazz. ... And that is really the idea of democracy — freedom within the
Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there and do anything
you want."

Amen to that, brother.

The common thread that ran through Brubeck's work was breaking down
the barriers between musical genres — particularly jazz and classical
music. He was inspired by his mother, a classical pianist, and later by
his composition teacher, the French composer Darius Mihaud, who
encouraged his interest in jazz and advised him to "keep your ears open"
as he travelled the world.

"When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection," Brubeck said in
2005. "Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I
can hear that in their music."

Brubeck was always fascinated by the rhythms of everyday life. In a
discussion with biographer Doug Ramsey, he recalled the rhythms he heard
while working as a boy on cattle drives at the northern California
ranch managed by his father.

The first time he heard polyrhythms — the use of two rhythms at the same time — was on horseback.

"The gait was usually a fast walk, maybe a trot," he said. "And I
would sing against that constant gait of the horse. ... There was
nothing to do but think, and I'd improvise melodies and rhythms."

American music...How cool is that?

Brubeck combined classical influences and his own innovations on the
seminal 1959 album "Time Out" by his classic quartet that included alto
saxophonist Paul Desmond, drummer Joe Morello and bassist Eugene Wright.

True genius surrounds itself with genius and is never jealous.

It was the first jazz album to deliberately explore time signatures
outside of the standard 4/4 beat or 3/4 waltz time. It was also the
first million-selling jazz LP and is still among the bestselling jazz
albums of all time.

Columbia executives blocked its release for nearly a year — until label President Goddard Lieberson intervened.

"They said, 'We never put out music that people can't dance to, and
they can't dance to these rhythms that you're playing,'" Brubeck
recalled in 2010. He also wanted a painting by Joan Miro on the cover,
something else the record company had never done.

Hee-hee.

"I insisted that we go with something new," he said. "And to their
surprise, it became the biggest jazz recording they ever made."

The album opens with "Blue Rondo a la Turk," a piece inspired by
Turkish street musicians Brubeck heard on a 1958 State Department tour.
The piece was in 9/8 time — nine beats to the measure instead of the
customary two, three or four beats — and blended folk rhythms with jazz
and a Mozart piece.

Cool, baby. Way cool.

The album also featured "Take Five," the cool and catchy odd-metered
tune that became the Brubeck quartet's theme. The tune was derived from a
pattern that Morello liked to play backstage. Brubeck asked Desmond to
write a two-part melody over the rhythm, and Brubeck patched the pieces
together.

"It was a song that people could relate to, and it influenced the
future of the music," said George Wein, a jazz pianist and founder of
the Newport Jazz Festival.

Good music is a universal language. It is understood implicitly, like a smile.

When the Romulans try to take us out, we should play "Take Five" for them so they won't kill us...That's assuming our humanity isn't crushed by the American Stalin and his useful idiots before that day arrives.

Brubeck "proved that a song with five beats in it and one with seven
beats in it could become popular," pianist Herbie Hancock said in an
email.

The jazz master played a key role in popularizing the first jazz
festivals in the 1950s, playing at the Newport festival at least 50
times and helping to found the Monterey Jazz Festival.

He was also the first modern jazz musician pictured on the cover of Time magazine — on Nov. 8, 1954.

Brubeck always felt that his successful jazz career led fans to
overlook the second career he launched as a jazz-inspired classical
orchestral and choral composer in 1967 after disbanding his original
quartet.

His experience in World War II led him to look beyond jazz to compose
oratorios, cantatas and other extended works touching on themes
involving religion, civil rights and peace.

"I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in
World War II," Brubeck said, recalling how he was trapped behind German
lines in the Battle of the Bulge and nearly killed. "I saw and
experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage
best with music."

The best way to combat horror? Beauty.

His interest in classical music was inspired by his mother, Elizabeth
Ivey Brubeck, a classical pianist, who was initially disappointed by
her youngest son's interest in jazz. She later came to appreciate his
music.

Born in Concord, California, on Dec. 6. 1920, Brubeck took piano
lessons with his mother as a child. Then his father moved the family to a
cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierras.

When he enrolled at the College of the Pacific in 1938, Brubeck had
intended to major in veterinary medicine and return to ranching. But
while working his way through college by playing piano in nightclubs, he
became smitten with jazz and changed his major to music. In 1942, he
married Iola Whitlock, a fellow student who became his lifelong partner,
librettist, and sometime manager.

Brubeck joined the Army as an infantry man, but ended up leading the
semi-official Wolf Pack band attached to Gen. George S. Patton's army.
They played popular standards as well as some of his first original jazz
tunes, including "We Crossed the Rhine," based on the rhythm of trucks
hitting the metal pontoon bridges as they entered Germany.

His band, which was one of the first integrated units in the
then-segregated Army, reopened the Opera House in Nuremberg, the site of
mass rallies organized by the Nazis, who had banned jazz.

Take that, Hitler!

Years later, the addition of Wright to Brubeck's quartet made the
group one of the nation's best-known integrated music acts. A longtime
champion of civil rights, Brubeck cancelled lucrative gigs at Southern
universities and on television's Bell Telephone Hour when the organizers
insisted that he replace Wright. He refused to play in South Africa
under apartheid.

After his discharge, he enrolled at Mills College in Oakland,
California. That's where he formed an octet, including Desmond on alto
sax, Dave van Kreidt on tenor sax, Cal Tjader on drums and Bill Smith on
clarinet. The group played Brubeck originals and standards by other
composers. Their ground-breaking album "Dave Brubeck Octet" was recorded
in 1946.

In 1949, Brubeck with Tjader and bassist Ron Crotty, both fellow
octet members, formed a more commercially viable trio and cut their
first records, which gained a national audience. After surviving a
near-fatal diving accident in 1951, Brubeck formed a quartet by adding
Desmond.

Brubeck continued performing with the latest version of his quartet
until just past his 90th birthday, despite needing heart surgery and a
pacemaker.

In a 2010 interview, Brubeck, who converted to Catholicism in 1980,
envisioned an afterlife where he'd again see his family and jazz
friends, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

Amen to that, brother.

"If there's a heaven," Brubeck said, "let it be a good place for all
of us to jam together and have a wonderful, wonderful musical
experience."

Brubeck is survived by his wife of 70 years, a daughter and four musician sons. Another son died in 2009.

Check out this reggae cover of "Take Five" by Ossie Scott and other cool covers of one of the greatest tunes ever from Youtube...

... How about this one, with lyrics by the incredible Al Jarreau...

...or Mr George Benson on guitar...

...The Bolyki Brothers...

...from Brittni Paiva on electric ukulele...

...and Benjamin Creighton Griffiths on the harp...

Heck, kiddies, I could do this all day.Why don't we all take five from the oppressive fascism of Obamastan and let some joy in?

(Image credit: NECN)

Just
like a scene out of "Antiques Roadshow," a woman in Hartford, Conn.,
turned in an old rifle to her local police station's gun buy-back, only
to discover the gun was worth anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000. The
woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, inherited the gun from her father
who had brought it home with him from Europe as a memento from World
War II.

The two officers conducting the gun buy-back, who are resident gun
experts for the Hartford Police Department, informed the owner she was
in possession of a Nazi Assault Rifle, the first of its kind, that dates
back to 1944.

The gun is called a Sturmgewehr 44, literally meaning "storm rifle," and
is the first "modern assault rifle ever made, eventually replaced by
the AK 47 in 1947 by Russia, who copied the German design of the
Sturmgewehr 44," Officer Lewis Crabtree, one of the two officers who
discovered the gun, told ABC News.

"It's like finding the Babe Ruth of baseball cards," said Officer John
Cavanna. "The rarity, it was made for such a very short period."

Most people, however, who aren't avid gun fans would have no idea what role this gun played in history.

"If you were to look at the gun and didn't know anything about guns, you would think it was garbage," Crabtree said.

That is essentially what the owner thought the gun was, bringing it to
the station knowing full well it would be put into a smelter, melting
the gun down into an iron brick.

"People turn in guns for a variety of reasons," Cavanna told ABC. "They
don't have a good way to secure it, they have kids around their home, or
they don't know how to use it. This is an anonymous way for someone to
take an unwanted firearm and get it off the streets. We then give them a
$50 or $100 gift card to Wal-Mart."

Crabtree attributes gun accidents to ignorance and carelessness. The
anonymous gun buy-back program is aimed at preventing people from
running into potentially dangerous situations with a gun they don't know
how to use or work.

This seems to be the reason the woman who dropped off the historic rifle.

"Her father passed away. The gun was in her closet," Cavanna said. "She did not know it was a machine gun.

"If the gun had been in the closet loaded, any second you could hit the
wrong level and discharge a fatal round," he said of the Sturmgewehr 44.

This German-made machine gun can fire 500 rounds in minutes, according to Cavanna, who is also a gun range master.

At the time the officers received the gun, it was in such disrepair that
it was inoperable, unable to shoot a bullet even if the gun had been
loaded. Cavanna said ammunition would have to be especially made for
this gun.

The unnamed owner of the gun has left the valuable artifact at the police station for safe keeping.

"We did not take the gun in for the gun buy-back program," Crabtree
said. "If we took it as part of the buy-back, we would have no choice
but to destroy the gun. We don't want to destroy that gun."

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.